Eve Keneinan's Blog

“Mythical Jesus”: The Fatal Flaws

My lengthy posting in which I explained why the “mythical Jesus” claim has no traction among scholars (here) drew (predictably) an attempt to refute it from the “Vridar” blogsite. I don’t think it succeeds, but readers will have to judge for themselves. I’ll content myself with underscoring a few things that remain established from my posting.

I focused on three claims that Richard Carrier posits as corroborating his hypothesis that “Jesus” was originally a “celestial being” or “archangel,” not a historical figure, and that this archangel got transformed into a fictional human figure across several decades of the first century CE. I showed that the three claims are all false, which means that his hypothesis has no corroboration.

There is no evidence of “a Jewish archangel Jesus”. All known figures bearing the name are portrayed as human and historical figures. Furthermore, contra Carrier, Paul never treats Jesus as…